July 26, 2007

A self-serving post this will be, sure, but the congrats are coming in for FightforRoom215's Best of Philly honor.

From the issue hitting news stands now:

The Metro doesn't get a whole lot of credit in journalism circles, but Josh Cornfield's mayoral-race blog "Fight for Room 215," crackles with good reporting and smart, attitude-filled writing. (From a late May post: "Michael Nutter met privately with Mayor Street this morning to start sizing up Room 215 for office furniture talk policy.) It proves you don't have to be big to be effective.

The Next Mayor gets the award for best local Web site, while Inky reporter Marcia Gelbart and her former co-worker, Michael Currie Schaffer, win for "most entertaining five sentences we've read all year."

"Thank God," Sharif Street whispered as his uncle told reporters that he wouldn't run for mayor. "Thank God. This is a god thing he's doing." But as his uncle's new plan emerged, Sharif Street - who had just turned in 5,600 signatures - froze. "I'm still gathering my thoughts," he said, appearing stunned.

As you can probably tell, things have been pretty much dormant around here since May 15. We promise to gear it back up soon for what promises to be a thrilling election ... that will make everyone wish it was 1991 and Frank Rizzo was around throwing bombs. Let's hope you've never waved a gun around drunk, Mr. Nutter.

Philly Mag's "Best of" issue comes out officially on Monday, with the party scheduled for Wednesday night.

At the Philadelphia Parks Alliance meeting this afternoon where a report was presented detailing the dilapidated state of the city's parks, Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown called Michael Nutter "Mayor-elect" in talking about how she'll work in the future to get money for the parks, reports Brian X. McCrone.

"You know, there is an election in November," Al Taubenberger blurted out from the back of the room.

Reynolds Brown was then forced to correct herself, calling Nutter the Democratic nominee.

"At least she corrected herself," Taubenberger said.

Meanwhile, Larry West is fighting for the Green Party nomination even though he's too young to run. Keep fighting, Larry. Keep fighting.

May 21, 2007

Inky has the report on this morning's Democratic Party ward leader breakfast at the Sheet Metal Workers hall on Columbus Boulevard.

Bob Brady said nice things about Nutter and Nutter said nice things about the ward leaders, whose help he plans to call upon for what promises to be an epic battle against Republican Al Taubenberger in November.

"He'll do a great job as mayor," Brady told the assembled ward leaders,
pledging his fealty after what he called a "family squabble." ...

"I know I've not always been the easiest guy to work with and get along
with - but, other than Bob Brady, I'm the most lovable," Nutter said.

May 16, 2007

He's the man of the hour, shaking more hands, getting pats on the back, having his cell phone filled up with messages to the point that he can't accept any more messages.

Unless Republican Al Taubenberger also knows how to perform magic tricks, Michael Nutter is your next mayor. He spoke with Metro on his way between Day After appearances this afternoon.

Has it sunk in yet that in about 250 or so days you’ll likely be running the fifth-largest city in the country?

I haven’t really thought about it in that fashion. ... I know it happened and I know I won. It is certainly a monumental challenge which I’m preparing myself for and I’m certainly up for. I’m very excited about it and I’m hopeful for the future.

When did you feel that you legitimately had a shot of running away with this election?

I never put a tremendous amount of faith in the polls. I always assumed that I was behind and just needed to keep my head down and keep working hard. I certainly received messages form the public that my candidacy was getting some positive response, but I just figured the best thing for me to do was stay focused, keep disciplined and keep working hard and the voters would take care of the rest.

How much were you involved in the decision processes over when and how to get your message on TV?

That was all a very collaborative process with our campaign hierarchy weighing in on a variety of decisions. I was certainly an active participant but it’s not the kind of thing where the candidate is the sole decision maker.On whether your “we had a really good day today” line was a jab at Street?

I think I said, 'we had a really good day today.' It has nothing to do with the mayor’s famous signature line. I hadn’t even thought of it. I think if you look of any tape I’m almost sure we said, 'I had a really good day today.' No jab or anything at the mayor.

When do you begin the process of lining up the people you want in your administration?

I think that is very far down the road. I’m not making any assumptions and I still have an election to run in November. There’s a lot of work to be done on the ground. It’s much too early for me to even think about things like people to work in the government. I have a real election coming up in November. I’m going to spend most of my time making sure we have the right campaign people, that were coordinating the efforts, that Democrats and independents and Republicans who are friends of mine to run the strongest campaign that we can.

Mayor Street held a hallway press availability this afternoon to talk about his best friend, Michael Nutter, winning last night's election. He said he won't do anything to hamper Nutter's transition into Room 215.

He didn't take any shots, per se, at Nutter, but made sure to note that Nutter could be in for a "rude awakening" as a tax-cutting former Councilman coming into a position where he has to be "all things for all people."

"You can't be for lower taxes and higher services," Street said.

On Nutter’s “we had a really good day” line Tuesday night and whether that was a jab at you?

He should of had a good day. I think it was a good day for Michael Nutter. He ran a strategic campaign, he was smart about it and he wound up winning. In this business you run to win. ... He’s the Democratic nominee and we’re all going to support him in the general eleciton and he’s going to be the next mayor.

[I'll put up a Q&A with Nutter in a little bit, but he says he wasn't going after Street at all with that line. "It has nothing to do with the mayor’s famous singature line. I hadn’t even thought of it." His full quote was "We had a pretty decent week. We had a pretty good couple of weeks. We had a really good day."]

Will there be a smooth transition despite your past relationship with Nutter?

(Gutteral chuckle) We will do everything we have to do to make sure a new administration is prepared to assume the responsibility of the mayor’s office. I think it will be a smooth transition. There are literally millions of people whose lives are at stake here and whose services are at risk. I personally wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize those people.

Was this a referendum on your administration?

I actually don’t see it that way. It’s real interesting, I watched a lot of this with great amusement. I saw candidates make claims that they coudln’t keep in a billion years. I was constantly amazed at candidates who were talking about hundreds of millions of dollars of missing money. I saw one blurb where candidate Knox said we have to find the missing money. There’s no missing money. Thers’s not hundreds of no-show employees. This is the kind of rhetoric that goes on in the campaign.

Does it stick in your craw that Nutter went after your record and won?

It doesn’t bother me that Michael Nutter was successful. I have some small concern about the nature of the allegations that he made. I think it’s unfair and inappropriate for Councilman Nutter or anyone else to suggest that I or anyone in this administraiton are indifferent to homicides. We care a lot about the homicides that are happening and the violence. For him to go on television and say, ‘this mayor has an indifferent attitude about homicides,’ I think was uncalled for and I think it was a low blow and probably somebody should of said something.

Michael Nutter was lagging down at the bottom of the polls when the mayoral race first started, staring up at Tom Knox, Chaka Fattah and Bob Brady.

He was a candidate with plenty to say on all of the issues, but when it came to connecting with voters across the city his campaign fell short.

Then, along came Neil Oxman.

The political consultant is something of a Mayor Maker in this town, leading the paid media attacks of Wilson Goode, Ed Rendell and, now, Nutter.

Oxman checked in this afternoon to talk about another successful campaign.What was your sense of where the campaign was when you were brought on board and what steps were needed to start getting Nutter’s message out on a broader scale?

I actually thought the campaign was in a reasonably good position in that I thought we had the best candidate. I thought we had the candidate with the best record and I thought he was very, very disciplined about what he needed to do to deliver his message to the electorate. There was no sense of panic at any time. There was ‘all right, this is what we needed to do.’ We certainly needed some breaks, which we got.

What were some of the breaks?

I’ll let you guys talk about that, you can dissect that stuff. I think that Nutter said it best. It’s sort of like we were so far down that nobody paid attention to us for a long time. I think that was sort of the biggest thing that we got. We were able to put our message out there undiluted without anyone putting a target on our back until the last week of the campaign.

Was there one key moment when you felt that the support was finally starting to materialize?

About 11 o’clock last night.

Why was the ad with Nutter’s daughter, Olivia, so successful?

I think it was effective because it was a different kind of ad. She’s so charming and so cute. It was just so different than all of the other ads that were out there and it really stood out. Ninety-nine percent of it was her personality, she was so wonderfully charming in the ad. It just cut through. I think that was the 99 percent secret of that ad.

Nutter has a 17,000 vote lead over Knox with 77 percent reporting and his campaign party shows it. It's not over yet, but the people partying here say they think it might be.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Any voter in line before the deadline will be allowed to vote, and then the counting begins. We could have our likely next mayor before midnight.

Or, as AP let us know just a bit ago, if the race is too close to call around 12:30 a.m. the counting operation will cease and they'll be counting the provisional and absentee ballots for the next week.

We're hoping it's over by midnight. Eleven would be even better. Call it by 10 and we'll bow down and kiss your feet.

Stay tuned to the FFR215 for updates throughout the night as we station reporters at many of the campaign's parties and, more importantly, at the election bureau where the final results are coming in.

Your Metro/FFR215 team includes: Josh Cornfield, Brian X. McCrone and Mike Benner traveling around to different parties, while Rikard Larma, Cody Glenn and Andre Pascoe point and shoot their cameras. Tom Rice mans the election bureau, while editors Ron Varrial, Stephanie Hinderer and Adam Levitan eat pizza in the office watch over the operation from Metro HQ.

It's been an exciting four months; now get ready for the final four hours.

It all comes down to today for the five campaigns and now it all comes down to these last two and a half hours.

One last push for all of the campaigns to get out the vote.
Then the parties begin at downtown hotels and a South Philly union hall.

The 2007 mayoral primary will be over soon.

Some things we saw this afternoon on our drive through Roxborough and then back into Center City:

A polling place at a bar. Damn, we wish our polling place was in a bar.

A hand-painted sign supporting Michael Nutter held by two supporters wishing they had more Michael Nutter supporters with them holding the sign as it blew in the wind.

Dwight Evans giving it one more shot to draw some voters, standing at the elevator heading into the bowels of the City Hall SEPTA concourse, just hoping that a handful of those whose hand he shook would go home and vote for him.

This is very serious. Police now confirm that two men, who were --
in a horrific touch -- wearing "Knox for Mayor" t-shirts -- entered a
Knox satellite campaign office at about 12:56 p.m. and pulled a gun on
a campaign staffer there.

The robbers demanded money. They got a canvas bag of money that was
full of what police are calling "employee salaries" -- and I think we
would call "street money" -- and left.